nd so. "One day
he sent word to him not to be for the future so continually at his
heels, and treated him even to his face with as much tartness and
imperiousnesss as if he had been the lowest of his valets." Such
treatment was not likely to be well received by one of the independent
disposition of Cinq-Mars. He joined in a plot against the cardinal.

The king was ill; the cardinal more so. Gaston, Duke of Orleans, was
again in Paris, and full of his old intriguing spirit. The Duke of
Bouillon was there also, having been sent for by the king to take
command of the army of Italy. He, too, was drawn into the plot which was
being woven against Richelieu. The queen, Anne of Austria, was another
of the conspirators. The plot thus organized was the deepest and most
far-reaching which had yet been laid against the all-powerful minister.

Bouillon was prince-sovereign of the town of Sedan. This place was to
serve the conspirators as an asylum in case of reverse. But a town was
not enough; an army was needed; whence should it come? Spain might
furnish it.

The affair was growing to the dimensions of a conspiracy against the
crown as well as the minister. Viscount de Fontrailles, a man who
detested the cardinal, and would not have hesitated to murder him as a
simpler way of disposing of the difficulty, was named by Cinq-Mars as a
proper person to deal with the Spaniards. He set out for Madrid, and
soon succeeded in negotiating a secret treaty, in the name of the Duke
of Orleans, by whose terms Spain was to furnish the conspirators with
twelve thousand foot, five thousand horse, and the necessary funds for
the enterprise. The town of Sedan, and the names of Cinq-Mars and
Bouillon, were not mentioned in this treaty, but were given in a
separate document.

While this dangerous work was going on the cardinal was dangerously ill,
a prey to violent fever, and with an abscess on his arm which prevented
him from writing. The king was with the army, which was besieging
Perpignan. With him was Cinq-Mars, who was doing his best to insinuate
suspicions of the minister into the mind of the king. All seemed
promising for the conspirators, the illness of the cardinal, in their
opinion, being likely to carry him off in no long period, and meanwhile
preventing him from discovering the plot and setting himself right with
the king.

Evidently these hopeful people did not know the resources of Cardinal
Richelieu. In all his severe illness his